


no matter how far

by anahita



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Discussion of Torture, F/F, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Mortality, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Protectiveness, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:21:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29120391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anahita/pseuds/anahita
Summary: There was something new about her life, and Andy was the center in a way the others were not. If she learned to use a weapon, she looked over at Andy first, and if Andy nodded then that was everything.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

Nile didn't know how many ways you could die until she couldn't. She was gutted in Rome. She had to sit with her insides hanging out. She waited as patiently as she could to heal. It wasn’t boring exactly, but impatience to be a part of the fight was by now a familiar burn. She could hear them two rooms away, slicing and cutting their way to the boy they had come to rescue—the kidnapped son of a diplomat from Ghana. She heard Andy grunt and a loud thunk. 

Nile gritted her teeth when she felt her insides shift and blood rush down newly formed arteries. It was a strange and slightly dreamy feeling, as if she were caught in a nightmare. 

“Gut wounds are the worst,” said Nicky as he came to sit by her, apparently done with the fight.

“Is she okay?” Nile jerked her head to the room next-door.

“Who?” Nicky raised an eyebrow. She pursed her lips at him. “Oh, Andy?”

“Shh,” said Nile, and stood up slowly. “Not so loud.”

“Andy is fine,” Nicky said in an exaggerated whisper. 

“Yes, but—”

“Are we talking about Andy?” said Joe, appearing from behind a fallen wall. “I thought her fighting style would change now that she’s mortal, but she’s still the same.”

“ _Not so loud_ ,” said Nile and furtively watched the shadows. 

“She fights without fear,” said Nicky with clear admiration in his voice. 

“She should be afraid,” said Nile. “You know how many ways there are to die—”

“I said gut wounds are the worst,” said Nicky, “but being beheaded takes the longest by far to heal.”

“You have to grow the head,” Joe nodded and came to help Nicky stand, “and it gets all slippery because you _were_ a moment ago and now you _are_ —”

“It’s as if no time has passed,” Nicky said, “but it’s been fifteen minutes or longer since you existed last—”

“Remember when Andy was sawed in half?” Joe picked pieces of plaster from Nicky’s hair. “That took like an hour?”

“Or the time Andy was flayed? That was horrible—”

Nile bent over in a corner and threw up. 

They were staying in an old villa outside the city. There were olive trees in the garden, and though they weren’t far from Rome, it felt like another world. The kitchen’s wall had collapsed at some point and a yellow bougainvillea slithered in the open space where they spent most of their time around a big table. They’d piled files on the table with information on the diplomat and his son, and the man trying to blackmail him, known as Hadrian. Andy had snorted when she heard the name. Her lip curled up in disdain. Nile was afraid to ask her, had she known the real Hadrian? She felt there were landmines in every conversation she had now. 

And she felt so young, sitting outside on the low wall that ran the length of the estate. 

“You know the flaying wasn’t so bad,” said Andy as she came to sit next to her. She held two mugs in her hands and handed Nile one. “It’s a slow method of torture and death. I healed before they could get enough skin off—”

Nile gulped down the too-hot tea. 

“They kept going,” Andy said. “There were three of them working on my legs at the same time. They wouldn’t admit defeat, which became amusing after a while.”

“Amusing?” Nile choked out.

“Sure,” Andy smiled a little. “More and more of them kept coming. They worked faster and faster. I still healed. They killed me when I laughed at them.”

“Will I be like you in a thousand years?” Nile said before she could think better of it. 

Andy looked hard at the side of her face. “You’ll be—” she said before stopping. Nile turned to watch her. Andy had a strange look on her face. “You’ll be you.”

“I’m going to change though,” Nile insisted. 

Andy took a sip of her tea. “Wouldn’t you have changed over the course of your life, even if it was like any other mortal’s? This is the same.”

“I’ll be me,” Nile said slowly, trying it out.

“I’ll do it in a way that doesn’t kill you,” said Hadrian, describing his dream of impaling Nile on a pole, after he'd caught her on his estate. The guards had watched her gasp awake after a shot to the head. “It is said that the ancient art of impalement—”

Nile rolled her eyes. 

“—originated with the Babylonians.” He kept giving her a history lesson on torture while she looked around and tried to find the cameras. Copley was monitoring the feed. “Darius I of Persia impaled three thousand Babylonians which just goes to show how fortunes can change. Bring the pole.”

She watched the guards bring it forward and felt her mouth dry up. It was one thing to know that she’d survive, another to convince herself not to flinch when Hadrian breathed his foul breath on her. 

“I have always wanted to try this,” he said and pulled her forward. 

“But it’s so boring,” she blurted out. 

“Boring?” he paused. “How is this boring?”

“I’m an immortal,” she said in a voice she’d heard Andy use when she wanted someone to feel stupid. “I can’t die. Think of the possibilities. You could try something new, but you’re so boring you have to use what the ancient Babylonians invented like a million years ago.”

“King Sennacherib—”

“Who cares about King Sennacherib? You’re a modern-day Hadrian, aren’t you?”

He slowly put the pole down. She saw a glint of light at the corner of her eye and was moving before she’d thought about it. The labrys came down on his shoulder and he screamed. Nile used her legs to strangle a guard and watched Andy cut through the rest. She saved Hadrian for last. 

“Did you say you would impale her?” she said, her eyes flashing. Nile felt her heart beat faster. “You?” 

Andy picked up the pole and stabbed him through the stomach. He spasmed as she moved closer to glare at him. She let him drop to the floor and moved over his body to Nile. 

“Are you okay, kid?” said Andy. Nile shivered under the heavy gaze and nodded. Andy found the keys to the iron cuffs. They left a moment later without looking back. 

They sat together around the bonfire, and Nile learned there was another immortal out in the world, apart from the four of them, Booker, and Quynh. 

“What?” said Nile, looking at the others. “Then why are they not with us?”

“He’s—” Nicky spit out, “not a good guy, not like us.”

“We’re the good guys?” said Joe. “Really?”

“Well, sure.” Nicky passed his beer to Joe, who finished it for him. “If not us, then who?”

“Nicolo,” Andy shook her head. “We’re not good or bad. Just like everyone else.”

“At least we try,” Nicky said stubbornly. 

“What’s his name?” Nile cut in. They’d fallen into an old argument. Really, it was like being with her endlessly exasperating family. “The other immortal?”

“He’s the devil,” Nicky said. “Moloch.”

“Moloch,” Nile said. “What’s the story there?”

“Andy found him,” said Joe, and moved to warm his hands on the fire. “It was before our time. They went around together for four hundred years before things started unravelling between them. He liked to make himself known, liked the adoration and fear. It got to a point where he encouraged others to worship him. He started acting like a god, or like Nicolo said. A devil. He asked for sacrifice. He wanted blood. Andy had left him by then, but she came back to stop him once he became a mass murderer—”

“It didn’t work,” Nicky said when Joe paused. Nile was used to how they talked by now. “He knew she was coming. This was during the Qin dynasty. Moloch was hiding in Xianyang when Andy found him. He had her before she knew it. He wanted to see if he could cut her enough to make it impossible for her to regenerate.”

Nile swallowed and watched Andy’s impassive face in the flickering light of the fire. She met Nile’s eyes over the flames. There must be a reason she wanted her to hear this. 

“He was an executioner. It could go slow ” said Joe, “or it could go fast according to what the Emperor had ordered. In this case, he went fast. He moved over her body and severed all her limbs then watched as she still came back—”

“How did you escape, Andy?” said Nile. She'd had enough.

“He has a weakness,” said Andy. “Moloch thinks of himself as beyond human or divine law. He likes to be recognized for what he is—an ancient entity. He appreciates those who see how inhuman he is. I was the one person who never did, but that day I became what he wanted. He decided to keep me around a little longer.”

“She cut his throat while he slept and buried him deep in the ground in a coffin made of iron,” said Nicky.

“Which was why when they took Quynh and put her in the water, she thought she had brought it upon them—” Joe had a sad smile on his face. “Even though that’s not how it works. If you don’t believe in God, how can you believe in retribution, or karma, or anything similar?” 

“As if any of it makes sense,” Andy said with a twist of her lips.

“You’re right,” Nicky got up and stretched. “It does not make sense. You know what does?”

“What?” said Nile.

“Vodka,” and he went inside to get it for them.

Nile groaned as she walked through the sunlit kitchen. “How come I have a hangover?” she complained to Joe as he leaned over the stove, making what smelled like coffee. “I’m literally immortal.”

“You win some, you lose some.” Joe pulled the percolator off the heat and poured her a cup. 

“This is so good,” Nile moaned as she took a sip. “Thank you.”

“No thank yous,” Joe shook his head. 

“Hey, Joe,” said Nile after a moment of silence. “Andy wanted me to hear about Moloch, right?”

“She went back to check on the coffin years after she buried it,” Joe said, and took a sip of his coffee. “It was empty. Since then, he's tried to kill us every hundred years. You’ll have to deal with him and she won’t be around to protect you.”

“Are you really okay with her leaving us?” said Nile after a brief pause.

“How could I be?” Joe sat across from her. “But if it’s her time, there’s nothing we can do.” 

“I just got here,” Nile said. “It’s not fair.”

Joe laughed.

She didn’t want to say that it terrified her to think of Andy dying. There was something new about her life, and Andy was the center in a way the others were not. If she learned to use a new weapon, she looked over at Andy first, and if Andy nodded then that was everything. They sprinted through the grounds and keeping up was a test of endurance unlike anything. They sparred, and if she could pin her a time or two, then Nile felt the glory of it for the rest of the day. 

“You’ll have time with her,” Joe said. “Don’t think too much about it, kid.”

“But,” Nicky said as they stood watching Nile and Andy spar in the wet grounds. “It is kind of tragic.”

Joe nodded, and they leaned into each other.

Nicky became Nicolo everywhere they went. The old lady serving them gelato laughed after he said something to her in Italian. “Nicolo,” she said and gave him a tissue to wipe his mouth as he grinned like a boy. 

“Nicolo,” shouted an angry man on the street while they walked near the Duomo in Florence. He cursed them for long minutes.

“What did you do to him?” said Nile in wonder. “And what’s he saying?”

“He said I’m a pain in the ass.” Nicky shrugged. 

“He cheated the old man at cards last night,” laughed Joe.

“I didn’t cheat,” Nicky said in a wounded voice. “I don’t need to cheat. Please.”

They opened the heavy doors of the apartment building they apparently owned. It was near Santa Croce, and crowds of people passed by talking loudly on their way to dinner. They were to stay here a week while Copley found them a new gig. This was how Nile had started to think of their work. The feeling she'd had when she first joined the Marines mellowed in the glow of her new life. There were still things to do, but she felt easier about it now. Her existence was mysterious and strange. Andy had done good over a millennia without understanding it. Nile could trust something similar was happening to her. 

Her room had a four-poster bed covered in green dusty sheets, wooden floors, and a bathroom the size of her old apartment. She bounced on the mattress for a moment and coughed when dust rose up. 

“Ever feel like you’re dreaming?” said Nile as she heard footsteps in the doorway.

“All the time,” said Andy. “Come on. The sheets haven’t been changed this century.”

They pulled them off and tucked in the clean linen. 

“You want to try them now?” said Andy with a slight smile. 

“If you’ll join me,” said Nile, and felt her heart stop. “I mean—”

Andy sat down and pulled her shoes off one by one. She lay back with a sigh. “I get tired now,” she said as Nile came to lie next to her. 

“I still get hangovers,” said Nile, rubbing her fingers on the smooth sheets. God, she could smell her—a little sweat, dust, some sweetness underneath. There were cobwebs in her hair from when she’d searched through the locked closets for bedding. 

“You don’t get hangovers,” said Andy. She was staring up at the dark ceiling. “You just think you do.”

“It’s psychosomatic?”

“Whatever you want to call it. Habit, learned behavior. It’s going to take time for you to stop thinking of yourself as you were.” 

“You said I would stay me.”

“These things aren’t you though.”

Nile moved her hand closer and closer to Andy. She felt a little sleepy and closed her eyes. “Nile,” she heard from a distance, and felt Andy moving away.

“Don’t go,” she said. 

Nile woke in a bedroom flooded with light, and alone in the bed. The disappointment was hard to swallow. She shook it off and moved to her bag to get fresh clothes. She’d noticed that the others could spend days in the same clothes. They would take a shower and put the same clothes on, which went against every molecule of her being. They slept on the floor even in houses with beds and went without two or three meals. It was only for her they made certain accommodations—getting her clean linen, making sure she had a hot shower—and her sadness from a moment ago faded just like that. 

“I’ll make us breakfast,” she said when she came downstairs. The kitchen was enormous and had a fireplace in the corner. She searched determinedly through the cupboards and took out groceries Nicky had bought from the market nearby. 

“This arugula is really fresh,” said Nile, and started chopping aggressively. “I’ll make savory crepes. You guys like crepes?”

“We’ll eat anything,” Nicky said and watched her hand move with concern. “Don’t get blood on the nice arugula.”

“Where’s Andy, anyway?” she said casually enough, she thought. 

“She went out early in the morning,” Joe said. “I just made a teensy comment that she look well-rested when she came out your room at dawn—”

“What?” said Nile and did get blood on everything. They sighed as they helped her clean afterwards. 

“She came out of my room?” she said, finally. “At dawn?”

“You didn’t know you had an ancient warrior in your bed?” said Nicky.

“Don’t tease her,” chided Joe. 

What happened next was that Nile chickened out and did not talk to Andy about it when she came back several hours later with her arm in a sling. 

“What happened?” said Joe mildly. 

“Fell,” Andy said, and locked herself in her bedroom. 


	2. Chapter 2

They went out for dinner. Andy glared at Joe when he held the door for her. “What?” he said and gave a pointed look to her sling. “You fell.”

Nicky tried the wine when they brought it over to the table. “Too sweet,” he said, and spoke for a long time with the sommelier, who nodded after a moment and left. 

“But they opened the bottle already,” said Nile. 

“Why do you think they make you try it?” said Joe. 

“Isn’t it rude?” Nile was feeling very American as she looked at everyone.

“You shot people in the head just last week,” said Nicky with a smile. “Isn’t that rude?”

“That’s different!”

They bickered for a while, but Andy kept quiet throughout. She was fiddling with the napkin and staring down at her hands. Nile darted her eyes to her and then away. She wanted to pull her in somehow, wanted to see if she could ground her in the present, but she didn’t feel it was her place. A deep breath and she turned to Andy. “You didn’t really fall, did you?”

The table fell silent. Joe and Nicky leaned back in their chairs. Andy looked up. Nile kept her gaze cool and even with effort. It was hard when it was this beautiful woman who’d grabbed her from her old life and pushed her to the magical place where she was both herself, a girl from Chicago and a Marine, and someone stretched out across time. 

“No,” Andy said, and looked away first. “Remember Moloch? He’s back.”

“What?” Nicky sat up. “Andy!”

“You should have told us earlier,” said Joe. 

“I’m telling you now,” said Andy with a hard stare at each of them. “I dealt with him.”

“How?” said Nile.

“I had one favor to call,” Andy said. “He won’t try to kill us for a hundred years.”

“What favor?” said Nile, feeling her heart leap to her throat.

“He—” Andy said, “goddamn, where’s that wine? He wants us to be like we used to be for one day. He offers it each time he comes and finds me. ‘Be my friend again?’”

Joe rubbed his face tiredly while Nicky clenched his fist and thumped the table. Nile felt her blood slow like it did in a combat situation. “When are you planning on seeing him?” she said. She sounded remarkably calm. 

“In two days,” said Andy. “I’m not telling you where.”

“There are better ways to die, Andy,” Joe said in a low voice.

“He won’t kill me.”

“He’s tried to kill you a hundred times, at least,” Nicky burst out. 

“He won’t kill me this time.”

Their dinner arrived just then. 

“I can hear you, you know,” shouted Andy, as the three of them sat on the balcony and discussed a way to stop her. 

“The last time Moloch came, he brought these ancient torture devices with him,” said Joe. “He had thumbscrews, a tean zu, something called a pear—?”

“A choke pear,” said Andy from inside. 

“Anyway,” Joe said loudly. “Who knows what his idea of fun is after so long? And if he finds out Andy can’t heal anymore?” 

“Here’s what we do,” said Nicky, leaning in close to them. “We tie her up until the time has passed—”

They heard the door open downstairs and watched Andy walk into the night. 

“It’s this mortality thing that’s thrown her for a loop,” said Joe while watching her leave. “If she was the Andy from before, she would never take that deal. I think she’s afraid of being afraid. Does that make sense?”

She decided to deal with the issue head on and cornered Andy the next day in the kitchen. “You’re being stupid,” Nile said. “I just want you to know.”

“Okay,” said Andy. Their elbows touched as they sat together on the table. It was so _nice_. Nile deliberately bumped her again and got a smirk in return. She ducked her head. 

“There’s something on—” Nile said once they were done with breakfast. She reached out with a thumb to wipe Andy’s cheek. There was nothing there, but there could have been, and that was enough.

“Did you get it?” said Andy with a small smile. 

Nile nodded and rubbed her thumb against her knee. 

Joe had a tracker on her jacket. They’d called Copley, and he was monitoring the cameras outside the apartment building. He promised to follow her while she was in sight. Nicky was waiting nearby and ready to trail her. 

Nile had been told to stay put. 

“Bullshit! Why?” she’d said in anger. They said her training needed work, and some other pretty words. “You think I’ll slow you down?”

“Andy gets distracted when you’re in danger,” said Joe. 

“Does she really?” Nile said.

“What have you done?” said Nicky to Joe and checked his guns and his knives and the ammo. “Moloch is another immortal like us, and that makes him more dangerous than the people you’ve dealt with so far. You’re a fast learner. You can deal with him soon.”

Nile let them leave her behind, but only because she had a secret weapon. She’d put a tracker in Andy’s sling when she was helping her change bandages. She pulled out the information on her location and leaped out the window to a blind spot she’d heard Copley discuss with Joe before. She waited for her leg to knit before running to a back alley where she hot-wired someone’s car. 

The idiots had been caught by the time she got there. “You broke our deal,” said a deep voice that rumbled down her spine. “You tried to trap me. Is this how you treat an old friend?”

“They followed me on their own,” Andy said in a tired voice. “You paranoid bastard.”

“Can you blame me? You tried to kill me that time in Xianyang!”

“I tried to kill you that _once_ , but you’ve come after me a hundred more times.”

“What can I say? I hold a grudge.”

“Is it the pear again? You’re so predictable.”

“You hate it so much. I think I’ll rip out your throat to begin with and then try a few other tricks I’ve been saving for you.”

“Hey,” Joe shouted, “why not try them on us? Find out what we hate instead? Now that you have a chance?”

“I’ll do that afterwards,” said Moloch. Nile could see him now. He was a tall man with a long staff in his hand, and surprisingly old for an immortal. He must have died the first time in his late fifties. His eyes were deep-set and a vibrant blue. She deliberately looked away and studied the layout of the room they were in. It was long and had only one door at the end. The entire house was quiet, and the street beyond as well. She’d seen no other people, but that didn’t mean there was no one around. Copley said it took the police about ten minutes to get to this neighborhood. 

Nile held her breath and leapt through the window. They all turned to her and hey, Andy had a panicked look on her face, so maybe—? Nile threw her axe sideways at Moloch’s head and watched it behead him in one smooth move. It fell to the ground with a loud thunk.

“It takes a while for the head to regenerate, right?” Nile said to Nicky. He nodded. They were out before the police arrived.

“No more stupid plans,” Nile said once they were done packing and out the city. They headed to Palermo for a job. Andy rested her head against the window. Would it be too much to ask for a sign of approval? Not much, maybe just a “good job,” or Andy could squeeze her neck in her warm hand, or she could—?

They drove all night to a hotel by the sea. It was owned by a friend of Andy’s, a grey-haired woman who pulled her into a hug as soon as they walked through the door.  “She has only two rooms,” said Andy, and they shrugged. Nile was too tired to think about it as she collapsed on the bed, pulled her legs up, and her face into a pillow. 

She found Andy asleep in a chair the next morning.

Nile was so infuriated she felt like yelling. She shook Andy by the shoulder. 

Andy yawned and opened an eye.  “What is it?” she said sleepily. 

“I know you’re like a million years old, but shouldn’t that make you better at this kind of thing than me?”

“What kind of thing?” Andy sat up and stretched. 

“This,” Nile gestured between them. “What’s happening here? Or—” Nile felt a moment of doubt swamp her. “Maybe I’m wrong?”

Andy gave her a long stare. 

Nile was about to back away when Andy put her legs around her and pulled until she fell in her lap. Nile scrambled into a more comfortable position and found herself facing her. Andy put her arms around her neck and their lips were almost touching. “I was enjoying it,” Andy said, and they were breathing against each other. “Everything felt so new because you’re so lovely,” and she kissed the corner of her mouth and brushed their lips together. Nile moaned and shifted closer. 

“You were going to make me wait because you like the anticipation?” Nile said once they had kissed for long minutes. “I feel that's a form of torture.”

Andy laughed and kissed her again.


End file.
